Boy that helicopter ride sure did make us hungry.  So where to eat?  Doug says the best place in Hilo is Ken's House of Pancakes.

Bill's not so sure.

I mean, a pancake house that has a spaghetti night AND tacos?  But whaddaya know?  Doug was right.  This place really is special.  Want to see the menu?  Click here.

I mean, how many restaurants have you ever seen that have a sumo wrestler watching every bite you take?  Just look at that stance.  Just look at that concentration on his face.  Bill says, "Hey Bonnie...I think I know what he's about to do."

Now if you've looked at the menu you may have noticed a few items designated as "Sumo" portions.  That means they're huge.  For example the Sumo Min is won ton soup with an entire pound of noodles.  And the Sumo Moco is a traditional island dish with six scoops of rice, your choice of four slices of Spam (actually a favorite food of the Hawaiians) or two ground beef patties, or six ounces of mahi mahi fish, all topped with a heaping helping of gravy and three eggs, any style.  Yum, yum.

And what's fun about all this is that anytime somebody orders a "sumo" dish, the waitress first rings the bell and then she bangs the gong and then...everybody in the entire restaurant -- cooks, waitresses, waiters, busboys, and even the customers -- everybody yells at the top of their lungs:
SUMO!!!

Now that's high class dining.  But Bill didn't get the sumo moco.  He didn't even get the loco moco, with just two eggs.

He got the keiki moco with merely one egg and one patty and one scoop of rice.  Bill is such a weenie.
But it was good!

Note from Doug:  Keiki is "child" is Hawaiian. 

Thanks for that website update, Doug.

Doug said that just down the road from Ken's House of Pancakes there was a black sand beach.  Bill had never seen such a thing, so off we went.

We saw a pretty beach, but no black sand.  Yet.

Mainly just black rocks -- not much to qualify as sand.

Then we spotted some beachgoers in the distance.

And sure enough, they were doing the things you do at a beach.  A beach without sand, anyway.

Wait, are those kids sitting on a little strip of black sand?

Well I declare.  This really is black sand.  How 'bout that.

And then we hit the Saddle Road across the middle of the big island that would take us back to our hotel.  Along the way we ran into a little cold rain.

And then, to Bonnie's great delight, we turned off on a side road through a lava field.  Doug had been telling Bill about this place for the entire trip.  The last time Doug had been here there was no pavement -- just a lava-gravel road that had been cleared by a bulldozer across the lava field.  And the only good way to ensure you were driving on the "road" instead of wandering across the lava was to follow a white line that somebody had created by poking a hole in the bottom of a bucket, filling it with white paint, and driving from the main highway all the way up to an observatory.  Doug said you'd better keep track of that squiggly white line because if you lose track of it, you're really lost.

But now, darnit, the road is nicely paved.  There's room for only one car on the pavement at a time, but it is paved.  Bonnie is just loving this.

Everywhere you look there's desolation.

But wait...even out here some plants are thriving.

These little guys were all along the road.

But you can't exactly claim this is pretty scenery.

Bonnie is enjoying the view from the car.

Bill doesn't think he'd like to live around here.  In fact, Bill has seen just about enough lava to last him for the rest of the trip.  Let's head back to the hotel.

Hey, there are some baby volcanoes.  And this is about it for the big island.  Tomorrow, back to Oahu.